Working hard on a new story, which means days when it feels like it’s really coming together and other days when the predominant thought in my mind is, “Who would ever want to read this?” It’s always like that early on. I tell myself to tell the story and we’ll see when we get to the end. I do set a goal of writing something each day. It may not be a lot, but I want something down on paper. I don’t have a set word count for the day, although I do want to fill at least one page of my writing pad. It’s easier now that the office job has been retired, but there are still some days the brain doesn’t want to work.
A couple of notices. The folks who do Boskone (Nesfa) are having a virtual meeting on Aug 15th – ReCONvene20. I’m excited to see this program and looking forward to the con. Check their site (nesfa.org). This may turn into a dress rehearsal for Boskone 2021, if we are still not able to hold an in-person con at that point. Personally, I fear that is a realistic consideration. Concerns for the future aside, check this one out on it’s own merits. On a non-fiction, serious science side, check out the Mars Society convention October 15-18. This one has moved online as well, which means that you can attend from anywhere. This is a serious scientific and space-flight meeting (the goal is humans on Mars), but for folks who read and love science fiction, it’s worth seeing our fiction come to life. The program is top notch and I recommend looking into it.
On the reading side, I finally got to “Every Heart A Doorway,” by Seanan McGuire. I wish I’d read it sooner. This is a delightful and delightfully dark story of children who have found their way through portals to fantasy worlds and, having returned, want only to go back. They are out of place in our world and considered crazy, so they are placed at a “school” that will help them get better. The characters are all unique individuals and uniquely twisted. This is a really short book, but McGuire’s prose makes all of these teenagers come alive. That’s an interesting sentence for this book, because then we get to the murders and the mystery of who is doing the killing (and why). Perhaps the one point I did not like (other than I didn’t want it to end) was that I was sure of the killer earlier than I would want to be in a mystery. Bottom line: I am ordering all four of the subsequent books in this series.